The Night's Dawn Trilogy by Peter F. Hamilton

grinned into his glass. “You must have been a formidable team, that was some mating flight.”
    “History now. What about you? I want to hear all about life on the knife edge. The gung-ho adventures of an independent trader,
     the shady deals, the wild flights. Are you fabulously wealthy? I have several granddaughters I wouldn’t mind getting rid of.”
    Meyer laughed. “You have no grandchildren. You’re too young.”
    “Nonsense. Stop being so gallant. Some of the girls are older than you.” She enjoyed drawing him out, listening to his stories,
     his difficulties in making the repayments to the bank for the loan he’d taken to buy
Udat
, his anger at the shipping cartels. He provided a welcome anodyne to the black fissure of emptiness which had opened in her
     heart, the one that would never close.
    And when he left, when the wake was over, the thanks given, she lay on her new bed in her new house and found ten young stars
     burning brightly at the back of her mind.
Ia-sius
had been right after all, hope was eternal.
    For the next eighteen years
Oenone
floated passively within the B-ring where
Udat
had left it. The particles flowing around it were occasionally deluged with bursts of static, interacting with the gas giant’s
     magnetosphere to stir the dust grains into aberrant patterns, looking like the spokes of a massive wheel. But for most of
     the time they obeyed the simpler laws of orbital mechanics, and whirled obediently around their gravitonic master without
     deviation.
Oenone
didn’t care, both states were equally nourishing.
    As soon as the blackhawk departed, the egg began to ingest the tides of mass and energy which washed over its shell. Elongating
     at first, then slowly bloating into two bulbs over the course of the first five months. One of these flattened out into the
     familiar voidhawk lens shape, the other remained globular, squatting at the centre of what would ultimately evolve into the
     bitek starship’s lower hull. It extruded fine strands of organic conductor, which acted as an induction mechanism, picking
     up a strong electrical current from the magnetosphere to power the digestive organs inside. Ice grains and carbon dust, along
     with a host of other minerals, were sucked into pores dotting the shell and converted into thick protein-rich fluids to supply
     the multiplying cells within the main hull.
    At the core of the nutrient-production globe, the zygote called Syrinx began to gestate inside a womb-analogue organ, supported
     by a cluster of haematopoiesis organs.
    Human and voidhawk grew in union for a year, developing the bond that was unique even among Edenists. The memory fragments
     which had come from
Iasius
, the navigation and flight instincts it had imparted at the birth, became a common heritage. Throughout their lives they
     would always know exactly where the other was; flight trajectories and swallow manoeuvres were a joint intuitive choice.
    Volscen
arrived a year to the day after
Iasius
’s last flight, rendezvousing with the fledgeling voidhawk egg as it orbited contentedly amid the ring.
Oenone
’s nutrient-production globe disgorged the womb-analogue and its related organs in a neat package, which the
Volscen
’s crew retrieved.
    Athene was waiting just inside the airlock as they brought the organ package on board. It was about the size of a human torso,
     a dark crinkled shell sprayed with rays of frost where liquids had frozen during its brief exposure to space. They started
     to melt as soon as it came into contact with the
Volscen
’s atmosphere, leaving little viscous puddles on the green composite decking.
    Athene could sense the infant’s mind inside, quietly cheerful, with a hint of expectancy. She searched through the background
     whispers of the affinity band for the insect-sentience of the package’s controlling bitek processor, and ordered it to open.
    It split apart into five segments like a fruit; fluids and mucus spilled out. At the centre